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Hello everyone. I thought I would start this year’s blog posts with a memento mori reflection on death and life. Since it is impossible to divorce death from life, we can use reflective energy to focus on how we want to live.

The beauty that Brandon Lee speaks with is eloquent, timeless and utterly peaceful. I am sure most of you know that Brandon was tragically killed while filming The Crow in 1993. This video clip was shot a little while before he died.

{I hope to do a post on The Crow and possibly Brandon Lee in the future}.

Let’s reflect on life and death with the same peace and gratitude that Brandon exudes.

Street Spirit (Fade Out)

“Rows of houses all bearing down on me I can feel their blue hands touching me All these things into position All these things we’ll one day swallow whole And fade out again and fade out

This machine will not communicate These thoughts and the strain I am under Be a world child, form a circle Before we all go under And fade out again and fade out again

Cracked eggs, dead birds Scream as they fight for life I can feel death, can see it’s beady eyes All these things into position All these things we’ll one day swallow whole And fade out again and fade out again

Immerse your soul in love Immerse your soul in love.”

SONG INFORMATION

Released: March 1995 Found on: The Bends & Street Spirit single. Acoustic version found on Fake Plastic Trees CD2.

This song was written in 1993, around the same time as “My Iron Lung.” “Creep” is Radiohead’s American hit, this is the British equivalent. Noted by singer-songwriter and guitarist Thom Yorke as “one of [the band’s] saddest songs” and describing it as “the dark tunnel without the light at the end,” “Street Spirit” was released as the band’s ninth single and reached number five on the UK Singles Chart, the highest chart position the band achieved until “Paranoid Android” from OK Computer, which reached number three in 1997.

Yorke has suggested that the song was inspired by the 1991 novel The Famished Road, written by Ben Okri, and that its music was inspired by R.E.M. The track is built around a soft melody in A minor with an arpeggio (broken chord) guitar part.

Thom: “Street Spirit is our purest song, but I didn’t write it. It wrote itself. We were just its messengers; its biological catalysts. Its core is a complete mystery to me, and, you know, I wouldn’t ever try to write something that hopeless. All of our saddest songs have somewhere in them at least a glimmer of resolve. Street Spirit has no resolve. It is the dark tunnel without the light at the end. It represents all tragic emotion that is so hurtful that the sound of that melody is its only definition. We all have a way of dealing with that song. It’s called detachment. Especially me; I detach my emotional radar from that song, or I couldn’t play it. I’d crack. I’d break down on stage. That’s why its lyrics are just a bunch of mini-stories or visual images as opposed to a cohesive explanation of its meaning. I used images set to the music that I thought would convey the emotional entirety of the lyric and music working together. That’s what’s meant by ‘all these things you’ll one day swallow whole’. I meant the emotional entirety, because I didn’t have it in me to articulate the emotion. I’d crack…

Our fans are braver than I to let that song penetrate them, or maybe they don’t realise what they’re listening to. They don’t realise that Street Spirit is about staring the fucking devil right in the eyes, and knowing, no matter what the hell you do, he’ll get the last laugh. And it’s real, and true. The devil really will get the last laugh in all cases without exception, and if I let myself think about that too long, I’d crack.

I can’t believe we have fans that can deal emotionally with that song. That’s why I’m convinced that they don’t know what it’s about. It’s why we play it towards the end of our sets. It drains me, and it shakes me, and hurts like hell every time I play it, looking out at thousands of people cheering and smiling, oblivious to the tragedy of its meaning, like when you’re going to have your dog put down and it’s wagging its tail on the way there. That’s what they all look like, and it breaks my heart. I wish that song hadn’t picked us as its catalysts, and so I don’t claim it. It asks too much. I didn’t write that song.”

The Choice is Yours…

Morpheus Asks Blue Pill or Red Pill???

Truth…

"What surprises you so much about humanity?
Man.
Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.
Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.
And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present;
the result being that he does not live in the present or the future;
he lives as if he is never going to die,
and then dies having never really lived."
—His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Liberation From Ignorance…

"The problem's not that the truth is harsh but that
liberation from ignorance is as painful as being born.
Run after truth until you're breathless.
Accept the pain involved in re-creating yourself afresh.
These ideas will take a life to comprehend,
a hard one interspersed with drunken moments."
-Naguib Mahfouz
Palace of Desire

True Freedom…

"True freedom and the end of suffering is living in such a way as if you had completely chosen whatever you feel or experience at this moment. This inner alignment with Now is the end of suffering. Is suffering really necessary? Yes and no. If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you as a human being, no humility, no compassion. You would not be reading this now. Suffering cracks open the shell of ego, and then comes a point when it has served its purpose. Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary."
~ Eckhart Tolle